


A Wolf's Howl

by LeighJ



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, F/M, Fluff without Plot, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hunters & Hunting, Love, Predator/Prey, Pregnancy, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Violence, Warg Jon Snow, Warging, Wolf Dreams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-12 22:09:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15349800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeighJ/pseuds/LeighJ
Summary: A lie was told to Daenerys Targaryen, a lie unlocked by Jon Snow when he slips into Ghost's skin.





	A Wolf's Howl

**Author's Note:**

> Rated explicit only for the graphic descriptions of death. Thank you as always wallflow3r for backing me on this, even when I read it too many times and came to dislike it! You're an' amazing beta ❤
> 
> P.S - This slides between show canon and book canon. I've seen every episode of the show but I'm only reading A Dance with Dragons I: Dreams and Dust, at the moment.

A howl fills the night sky and rises like a summons to the waxy, white moon hanging swollen and intimidating as a great big eye without colour. The night is black as pitch, sprinkled with a handful of tiny dots, bright and watchful. He turns his head away from it and away from the calling of his sister who he feels so close and yet so far. It is only them now. Him and his sister, the Queen of the Wolves. She calls for him every night, howling for her pack brother, her last one of the litter she was birthed into. The other brothers and sisters she leads are chosen by blood and savagery, by strength and valour.

He and she were chosen by something greater, blood brother and sister. A pack. She calls but he does not answer. He never answers. He has not made a sound in all the time he has roamed the lands of man. Has not made a sound from the day his brother took him home, his brother made of skin and bone, his brother with the wild hair and dark eyes, his brother who could just as well be his kin in human flesh. He turns his head away from the call of his sister, though it tears something in his breast that makes him want to whimper, to share noise with the world.

He resists and loops through the treeline at a jog, sniffing, hunting, cocking his ears and pressing his wet nose to the sodden earth for the scent of something to eat. He is so hungry. The beasts on the rock flare their stomach cooked fire at him when he edges near them so he avoids them in his search, though they tower him beyond measure. His human brother loves their silver haired mother though and he suspects he has begun to love them too. He does not make noise, not like his sister, still howling to the air for him to come and find her, but he watches.

He watches his human brother love the beasts as he begins to love their mother and he felt his agony when one of the beasts did not come back from the sky. He remembers the silver haired mother of the beasts crying for many a night, for a whole moons turn and he remembers how the tethers between him and his human brother strained with his human brothers pain. It was not as deep or as agonising as when his brother slipped beneath the black curtain of death, hovering between here and there. Not like the night when he guarded his human from the rot and decay he smelled behind the billowing archway of fabric, not like the pain that bore down on his chest and tender belly as his human’s body screamed its silent agony.

Not like that but still tender and achy, still a broken piece that made him whimper in his mind until his heartbeat and his paws beating the ground was a simple, unbroken track of pain. His human is safe now. Safe in the bed of the silver woman, safe curled around her the last time he padded around inside the man-made dwellings. In the midst of the sun and the rain and earthen smells peppering his nose, he finds the scent of a deer. A doe. He can see her in his eye, see her wet brown eyes and her twitching nose, smell her musk and hear her heart thundering. His ears prick as he lifts his head and it is there, waiting for him: her life essence on a gust of wind.

Hind legs springing, spraying dirt, he bounds forward in silence, a white blur over a pond of cool wetness and a flash of red when he finds his own face. Ghost. He is a ghost, he enjoys the name that his brother gave him, though it is not the name his once thriving pack knows him by, not the name he was given. There is no noise from him but plenty in the night, the cracks of branches beneath his paws and the wind whistling through his fur, the doe’s heartbeat and the distant roar of the beasts perching on the rock, screaming for their brother.

He knows what it is like to lose a brother. He has lost three and a sister too. It might be that the beasts will not flare at him now. They are to become a new pack, he knows that in the way his people have always known of the morrow. He and them, his human and their mother. He has seen what they release from their jaws, they have seen what he can do with his. Their mother is mighty and brave, a warrior and his human is much the same. They would be a fearsome pack and the babe too, the babe that his human and the silver woman made, bundled up in her belly, the babe would be a mix of them all.

The ice, the man lands, his human, the fire in the beasts mouth and the silver sheen of their mothers hair, the babe will be unstoppable. He will protect it like it is his own cub. He already curls besides the mother’s belly of a night when he is not out looking for food. Food… his belly pulls tight with his sharp turn and then he is upon her. Wet, wild eyes. Big, twitching nose. Musky, firm flank with heat rising from her flesh. His jaws unhinge, flooding wet and sticky as he slinks down into the soil beneath him, ears flat and eyes watchful. The doe does not bolt but there is fear, he tastes it sharp and acidic.

There is a moment where the doe almost runs but he is fast and he is upon her before she chooses to live or die. His teeth cut through her flank and drag her, claws slicing into the buttery fur of her throat to quiet her noises. Blood fills his mouth, hot and pungent, full of life and birth and death, full of contentment. When he pulls his teeth from her flank he dives right back into her soft, upturned belly and when he does not howl with his conquest his blood sister does it for him, her mourning filling the sky.

* * *

The howl of the Wolf wakes Jon Snow and he seizes upright all at once, his chest heaving and sweat slicking his skin, wild curls matted to his throat and cheeks.

The howling echoes outside his windows and in his head. For half a heartbeat he is still Ghost and Ghost him, his claws digging and ripping, his teeth tearing and yanking. Hunger bites into his gut, raw meat strains his breath and his teeth are slick with blood.

 _The babe_.

"Daenerys,” he gasps, heart still pounding, hand shaking as he turns and lays it, big and scarred and rough upon her arm.

She stirs in her sleep, his Queen and her silver hair gleams like mother of pearl under the full moon, the howl of Nymeria echoing as she calls to her last blood brother.

“Jon?” She whispers softly.

It is utter madness, complete and utter madness, but he whispers with a tremble, “you are with child.”

The unnatural blend of purple and blue that wars in her eyes disappears under the sweep of her lashes as she blinks at him. “Jon, you had a dream. Come, lie with m-”

Where her small, delicate hand lays over his bare forearm he snatches it up with his free hand and drags her fingers to his lips, kissing them softly as he turns into her naked body. “You are with child. Ghost knows it.”

“Ghost…” She hesitates as he continues to kiss her fingers and her wrists, her veins. “You had a Wolf dream.”

He has told her of his Wolf dreams. When he fought with the Wildlings, they called him a Warg for his Wolf dreams and he did not believe them but they were real, they were. Ghost had been hurt, just as he had dreamed and who is he to dismiss such notions after all that he has seen? The Others, The Night King, the wights, Dragons… he would be a fool to dismiss this.

"I was Ghost. He was thinking about the babe, about who he would become, about…” He trails off, remembering how Ghost was distracted, remembering the scent that lay across his tongue and remembering the feral hunger, the burning inside him.

"Jon?” His Queen prompts. “I cannot bare children, Mirri M-”-

"Dany,” he cuts over her. “We have spoken of this. Who is to say she was not lying? Who is to say any of what she told you is borne of the fruits of truth? The woman killed your Khal and your child, she knew she was soon to die upon the pyre, she knew she could no longer hurt you but with filthy, tainted words…”

Daenerys smiles patiently at him and Jon knows she does not believe him. It is none the matter, he does know, _Ghost_ knows and the Direwolf is not curled on the floor where he usually lies of a night. They will find a maester on the morrow, someone who can confirm, someone who can make her believe… another howl punches the air and Jon’s hair stands on end. He can still feel the lingering conquest of his dinner… of Ghost’s dinner, the defeat of his prey, of his need to celebrate. He refocuses his eyes upon his Queen and smiles softly, stroking her thumb to rid her of the worry creasing her brow.

She smiles back at him, a mere shade upon who she is when facing her Court. The babe. She does not believe it, he knows but he cannot help but laugh with the sheer joy of the knowledge Ghost has given him and he knows she will join him in this celebration on the morrow, after they find a maester who can tell her, who can prove to her the truth. That same swooping excitement awakens in his belly and mixed with the joy in his heart he falls upon her. She shrieks a bale of laughter as he presses hungry, quick kisses to the still flat skin of her stomach, running his hands over her bare hips and imagining the seedling that is growing there, _his_ seedling.

In another life the knowledge would have terrified Jon Snow. He did not want a bastard, he did not want his child to live the life he had. Then he said the words and he did not want to break his vow, even when he fell in love with a Wildling but he died for his men and for his watch, fell at their own hand and his watch ended. Now he is something new, something on the precipice of the living and the dead, breathing in a manner that resembles a human but also bearing the scars of death. He does not like to think of himself in that manner and he bathes instead in the heat of Daenerys’s soft belly, picturing it stretching taut with the growth of their child.

What a man he will be. Jon will teach him to joust and use a sword, will teach him to sit straight and be kind, and will teach him to be honourable, like his grandsire. A Wolfling Jon is, no matter Catelyn Stark’s wroth to admit it and a Dragon his Queen is, of which there is no doubt. Their boy will be fierce and mighty and comely. In time they will find him a beautiful woman, someone he loves and someone he wants to take as his Princess, someone worthy of him or maybe it could be a girl, Jon muses as Daenerys lulls in silence and lets him be.

He presses his cheek to the soft skin of her navel and closes his eyes, picturing a girl with his dark hair and his Queen’s strange, mesmerising eyes or a boy with her silver hair and maybe her eyes too, Rhaegar Targaryen come again the small folk will say. Boy or girl they will love their child and Daenerys will birth a King or Queen. Despite her sex Daenerys has taken her rights and Jon hopes that she will follow it into tradition and that no matter the child she births, he or she will rule. Then he can pass his own Northern Crown to Sansa who is a true Stark and a true Queen.

With his thoughts crafting to females he dreams of a curly haired daughter as wild and free as Arya, wearing breeches and tunic. She will fuss and run away when her Lady Mother tries to force her into a gown and will make her handmaids lives a night terror come to life but he will teach her to fight, to be cunning, and to withstand the world that tramples over women. He will show her how to be Queen alongside his own and they will raise a truly remarkable child. Daenerys’s breath has slowed into sleep during his musings and he presses a soft kiss to the thin skin of her pubic bones, the musk of her scent light in his nostrils.

He could bend his head and take her sweet essence into his mouth or he could turn her on her belly and slide into her wet wonder and lose himself. He could do these things or he could enjoy the howling of Nymeria outside his window and think of a wild daughter, with wild curls and a wild heart; maybe he could call her Arya, for his wild little sister who loved him so deeply it did not matter that he was a bastard. For a son they could call him something of Daenerys’s choosing, maybe after one of her brothers or her father. Smoothing his hand across her hip, knuckles tattered and dusty against her perfect flesh, he thinks of the babe in her belly as they are, not as a child but her belly stretching with growth and lets a smile lift one corner of his lip.

A tiny, perfect little babe curled against her ribs, nursing upon one breast and tiny fingers catching in the waves of her moonlight hair. For a moment he sees it, not what sex the babe is to be or where they are located, not their future in truth but his own sweet musing: Daenerys in an oaken chair carved with Wolves and Dragons, one that rocks as she sways, humming musically under her breath, her body nude but for the marks of birth upon her belly, a woven blanket over her lap and the babes soft head, tugged aside from her ribs to bare her breasts.

He sees no clues to the colour of the babe’s hair poking from underneath its little burrow but he can hear the suckling of its soft little mouth upon his wife’s teat. When she looks up at him, she is smiling and she laughs full and merry, even as tiredness clings to the corners of her eyes.

“You were right, Jon,” she whispers, reaching to stroke the child’s small head beneath the blanket, her eyes alight with love. “I was with child. I was with the most beautiful child in all of Westeros.”

When he grins in the dream, Ghost’s head rises and he pierces Jon with his all-seeing eyes, his red eyes that see the morrow and the now and the before and for just a moment, one small moment, he tips his chin as if he means to howl but there is no need for the sound as his blood sister fills the air and the brothers and sisters she’s found follow soon after her, filling the world with noise.

It dies down, fades but then Daenerys’s two children roar, her first children, made of fire and blood and scales. They roar and screech and the very air alights with heat and the Wolves join in, overlapping them, winding over and through them and Jon Snow is home.

The home he has searched for, craved for, died for. He is home with his child and her children and their child. _A child made with mine own seed_ , he thinks in wonder.

He is home with Daenerys.

 


End file.
